Without participants, there is no participatory project. Recruitment is often one of the most time-consuming tasks in a participatory project – and there is no indication that recruitment for online participatory activities is easier than recruiting for offline ones. Having designed a killer project is not always necessarily enough. The first thing that you have to do is to prepare a recruitment strategy. You have already identified the young people whom you would like to invite to take part in the project. In the box below we have included a selection of methods which are often used in participatory projects. Have a look and choose the ones that suit your project and country.
If your project runs for several months, recruitment is not a one-off activity. It is something which takes place continuously. However, in this case, you need to decide whether it is important to retain the same group of people throughout the whole process, which does not necessarily have to be the case.